Conservative author and counterterrorism expert Andy McCarthy is criticizing the Los Angeles Times for not releasing a 2003 videotape it obtained of Barack Obama giving a toast to an anti-Israel professor who formerly served as a spokesman for late PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

The LA Times is being accused of "suppressing" a 2003 tape of a farewell gathering in Chicago for then University of Chicago Mideast studies professor Rashid Khalidi, who is a longtime virulent critic of Israel and has justified Palestinian terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. Barack Obama paid a special tribute to Khalidi that night and noted that he and Michelle were frequent dinner companions of the Khalidis.

Former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were also in attendance at the Khalidi bash. While Obama and Ayers served on the board of the left-wing Woods Fund together, they underwrote the Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. The anti-Israel group was started by Khalidi and his wife Mona.

Andy McCarthy, the chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the legal affairs editor at National Review, says it is obvious why the LA Times is not releasing the tape of the Khalidi bash.

"If either John McCain or Sarah Palin or another prominent Republican or prominent conservative had been at a party, basically in honor of somebody who is a terror apologist, at which terrorists were front and center in attendance, one can't even imagine the thought that the mainstream media, including the LA Times, would not only release that tape but actually fill us for days if not weeks with story after story about the gory details of it," McCarthy contends.

This is yet another example, according to McCarthy, of the mainstream press "covering up" an event that is embarrassing and difficult for Obama to explain.

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